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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27904426">last night</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/distractionpie/pseuds/distractionpie'>distractionpie</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Dominant Rex, Established Relationship, Light improvised bondage, M/M, Post Fives' death, Post s06e04, Reference to Choking, ambiguous ending, complicated relationship</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 18:08:01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,593</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27904426</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/distractionpie/pseuds/distractionpie</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>In the aftermath of Fives' death, Rex visits Fox's room with a different set of intentions than usual, but old habits die hard.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>CC-1010 | Fox/CT-7567 | Rex</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Star Wars Rare Pairs 2020</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>last night</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/zeddwashington/gifts">nimhamartia (zeddwashington)</a>.</li>



    </ul></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Rex has been responsible for the death of brothers.</p><p>It's a grim reality of command.</p><p>You couldn't win wars without making sacrifices. Rex did what he could to keep casualties to a minimum, but on occasion he’s had no choice but to send men into the battle knowing they wouldn't come back. But that was very different from pulling the trigger.</p><p>What Fox had done was unfathomable. To shoot down a brother was a horrific act, even when occasionally necessary in face of traitors. But Fives was no traitor and posed no threat, especially with Rex and General Skywalker handling him.</p><p>All they’d needed was time: to remind Fives that they could be trusted and that whatever had tipped him into such a fevered panic in the wake of Tup’s death would be handled if he just had trust in them.</p><p>Instead, the Guard had come in hard and fast and committed an act of unnecessary horror.</p><p>Even if Fives had been a risk, at such close range Fox should have been able to land a stunning shot, but he’d had his blaster dialled high enough to burn through the plastoid of Fives armour and hadn’t given de-escalation a chance before firing.</p><p>They were trained for war, to shoot first and leaving asking questions to Generals and the Senators, but they can be better than their training. So why wasn’t Fox?</p><p>He can see the apprehensive eyes that follow him as he makes his way through the barracks of the Coruscant Guard. Fox’s men know who Rex is and they know what their commander did, but nobody moves to stop him or even question his intent.</p><p>When he’s walked these halls before, the Guard have been welcoming, greeted him as a brother despite serving at opposite ends of the galaxy, plus a few knowing looks from those who were close enough to Fox to have figured out Rex’s visits were more than friendly. Now they’re a mix of avoidant and hostile, and, in the case of the latter, Rex isn’t sure whether to admire their loyalty to their commander or shake them and ask why their wariness is directed at him when it’s their commander who killed a fellow clone.</p><p>None of them will have the answers he seeks though, and so he walks on until he comes to a familiar door. He knows Fox is in there, GAR troopers have to be accountable and while there are places to go in their off hours Fox tends to avoid the common areas and other popular haunts to give his men the freedom to relax away from the eyes of a senior officer. It’s a habit Rex shares. And it means there’ll be an answer as soon as he can bring himself to knock, though he knows no matter what his hopes are there’s nothing Fox can say which will make what happened acceptable.</p><p>He hasn’t always come here in joy, sometimes it’s been about seeking an escape from the crushing pressures of the war: channelling his frustration and fear into fucking someone who understands but is nowhere near his chain of command. But he’s certainly never felt this twisted up inside before. Still, he needs to know, or at least look Fox in the eyes and establish where they stand now that this is between them.</p><p>Rex raises a gauntleted fist and knocks.</p><p>The door slides open only a moment later, and Fox doesn’t look surprised to see him.</p><p>Because he’d known that Rex would come to confront him, or because one of the many brothers Rex passed on his way here commed their commander in warning.</p><p>It doesn’t matter.</p><p>He steps inside without waiting for an invitation, he’s never needed one before now, and fixes his gaze on Fox, stripped down to his blacks and seated at the desk with a datapad.</p><p>It’s the first time Rex has seen his face since it happened. He hadn’t been surprised when Fox kept his helmet on at the scene, even when their others removed theirs in acknowledgement of the loss; Fox had always worn his helmet like a shield in public, letting people wonder what was going on beneath it.</p><p>It turns out: Nothing.</p><p>Fox’s expression is focused but utterly calm. He looks like he could have just walked out of a brief or training exercise, not the merciless killing of a brother who was clearly unwell and in need of help.</p><p>How could one of them care so little?</p><p>Rex knows Fox. Not as well as the brothers he’d trained with, but well enough from the time they’ve spent together. This isn’t the first time they’ve found themselves on opposite sides, Ahsoka’s framing had divided them too, but despite the conflict Rex had understood Fox’s fierce response in the face of the troopers she’d supposedly killed, even though Rex had never believed the situation could be as it appeared. The man standing indifferently in front of him feels like a stranger, were it not for familiarity in a few faint scars Rex might even wonder if another brother had stolen Fox’s armour.</p><p>What hangs between them is too heavy to be ignored, so Rex cuts to the core. “Why did you do it?”</p><p>Fives is lying in a morgue (a Coruscant Guard morgue, because it’s their planet, and being returned to their closest brothers for a goodbye is a privilege which has never been extended to clones) and Fox offers no apology (though that’s almost a mercy, given how cheap one would have been after the choices Fox had made), no excuse but a simple, “I had to.”</p><p>Rage.</p><p>Rex has never been prone to it, they’d been trained to understand getting caught up in emotion would only compromise him and working with Jedi had reinforced that, but while Fox’s abhorrent lack of feeling had baffled him, this blatant falsehood stokes a fire he usually keeps deep.</p><p>“You had to?” he echoes, disbelievingly. Tup had killed one Jedi and attacked another, and the 501st had managed to contain him and send him for treatment, even if the Kaminoans had ultimately only been able to study the cause not prevent his decline. If a squad of the Coruscant Guard led by their own commander are unable to apprehend one trooper — who had been unarmed until their aggressive tactics had alarmed him into attempting to defending himself — then something was deeply wrong with all of them.</p><p>“You don’t understand,” Fox says, and Re might have had pity for guilt but the words are cold, as if he really thinks Rex could have made it through the war without understanding what it looked like when a trooper put violence before their good judgement.</p><p>“I understand that Fives was one of my men,” Rex snaps. However many other ways the situation might have been messy, that was indisputable. Fives was his responsibility, his and General Skywalker’s and they had been talking Fives down from whatever stress or fever fuelled delusion he’d been caught up in, before Fox’s unwarned for interruption. Yet it was Rex and General Skywalker who’d had to make hours of reports regarding what they’d been doing meeting with Fives without reporting it to the main investigation and what Fives had said to them, as if they didn’t have every right to be involved in the pursuit of a man under their command. And it had been Rex alone who’d broken the news to Jesse and the rest of the men, grimly aware that so few of the faces staring back at him had been long-standing members of Torrent, most of the men from Fives’ old group of friends already lost.</p><p>“And I had my orders,” Fox replies. “Coruscant comes before any one life.”</p><p>As if Fives had been a threat to the planet. A bitter laugh slips from Rex. At least Fives had died with his ravings about the Chancellor having him killed validated, if only in the sense that the man was behind all of their directives, including the one which had prompted Fox’s brutal overreaction.</p><p>“Coruscant? What threat could one man with a blaster had proposed to the entire planet?” Rex demands incredulously. “At worst, he could have shot at you.”</p><p>Fox flinches and for a moment it seems like the accusation, the implication of cowardice, has met its mark, but then he retorts, “He could have shot you.”</p><p>Rex’s stomach drops.</p><p>Is that how Fox sees it? That he was acting in Rex’s defence? That Rex would ever accept one of his men being killed just for his life? Rex has never wanted that, his life is for his men and the Republic, and Fox knows it.</p><p>Fox knows it and the look on his face is less that of a desperately protective lover, which Rex might have understood even if he could never have forgiven, but of a man grasping at straws to explain the unjustifiable.</p><p>How dare he? Of all the things he could have said, could have done, to salt the wound by attempting to place the blame on what is between them is the cruellest, and the doubt and pain in Rex’s heart gives way to anger as he surges forward, slamming Fox against the wall because it’s clear that reigning in his anger is wasted on a man who doesn’t seem to even see the repentance he owes.</p><p>“You murdered him,” Rex accuses, and it’s true in all the senses that matter, if not by the laws which govern the clones, and watches as Fox shuts his eyes, as if there’s any ignoring what he’s done.</p><p>The fabric of Fox’s under-shirt is straining in his grip, their breaths mingling. Rex had acted out of anger, but the closeness is an all too familiar reminder of the way he usually released whatever storm was inside of him when he came to Fox’s room.</p><p>That at least, had always provoked a response from Fox, proving that he was capable of feeling — he just didn’t spare any on regretting what he’d done to Fives.</p><p>Fox has acted recklessly, wantonly, in a way that Rex doesn’t understand and suspects he hasn’t yet seen the full repercussions of, and in the wake of that, what more harm can be done by giving into his own impulse?</p><p>Pressing their lips together is familiar and easy, despite the new wrongness of it and the way Fox tenses with surprise before kissing back. This isn’t what Rex came here to do, but it’s clear he’ll get no satisfaction from Fox’s words and this is the next best way to drive out the burning mess of emotion that buzzes beneath his skin.</p><p>Perhaps it’s betraying Fives’ memory, but what is one more failure in light of being unable to save him?</p><p>The scrape of Rex’s teeth over Fox’s lips is no vindication, but it’s all he has and so he savours the way Fox’s breath hitches, the prospect of driving fine cracks in his control: once about making him give in to pleasure and relaxation, now to see if there’s anything beneath his cold-eyed insistence that what he’d done was in any way necessary.</p><p>Once or twice Rex has seen bruises on Fox’s throat — their duties pulled them too far apart for any expectations of exclusivity, but he’d looked at them and wondered if they were a sign that Fox was going to someone else for the kind of things Rex wasn’t willing to give.</p><p>Now he looks at the unmarred length of Fox’s neck and for a moment wonders what it would feel like under his hands. If Fox’s bruises from before came from silly games or if he’d had his neck gripped like they’d been trained to: firm hands wrapped all the way around, pressing down until whoever was beneath them was subdued.</p><p>Or more.</p><p>But Fives wouldn’t want that.</p><p>Rex doesn’t want that.</p><p>He hadn’t come here for revenge, just some grim hope that Fox would have an explanation. And, since he can’t have that, this? This might let Rex lose himself, at least for a little while, in something that isn’t guilt at failing to protect yet another man under his command.</p><p>So instead he lets loose with his mouth, feeling the racing flutter of Fox’s pulse under his lips as he stakes his claim in bites just deep enough that anyone who sees Fox out of armour will know where they came from, will be able to guess that Fox gasped and arched into the pain like that at least he understood was his due.</p><p>When Fox’s throat is patterned a tender red that Rex knows will bloom into bruises, he releases Fox’s collar, tugging at his shirt until it bares his chest, slips down his arms but Rex kisses him again, grabbing Fox by the shoulders before he can fully untangle his arms. Fox’s hands are only metaphorically bloody, but Rex doesn’t want them on him right now.</p><p>“Keep them there,” he orders, waiting for a moment to see if Fox will respect his authority in this — yes — before stripping out of his own armour. It feels strange to be removing his defences under the circumstances, but, for all that Fox is a murderer, he’s no threat right now and all the things Rex wants to do are much more challenging through armour.</p><p>He lets each piece drop to the floor, noting one vambrace rolling under the desk, because Rex’s armour is scuffed from years on the front lines and there’s nothing falling to Fox’s floor can do to it that matters, before he fixes his attention back on Fox. His tangled hands are still trapped behind his back, but he watches Rex with wary eyes and it feels more like condescension than Fox being a partner to all the things Rex wants from him.</p><p>“I can leave,” he says, words falling sharp and weighted with the fact they both know that if Rex walks out the door now he won’t be coming back.</p><p>“Don’t,” Fox’s eyes are dark, his voice rough. It’s emotion if not the one he’s looking for, so when Fox says, “Stay”, Rex steps closer and lets himself get lost in the familiar motions.</p><p>When all of his pain and frustration has been spent into Fox’s body, and Fox has shaken apart for him even if not in the ways he needs, they lie pressed together, sweaty and breathless, and nothing has changed.</p><p>It would be wrong to have a man who had needlessly shot down one of his subordinates as a lover, and there was only one side of Fox’s part in this that it was within Rex’s power to alter.</p><p>Yet, what would he do without even this outlet?</p><p>What would he do when days, weeks, months from now he made his own mistake? It was tempting to think himself above what Fox had done, but it has been scant days since Rex had watched Tup —bright, earnest, loyal— turn his blaster on a Jedi, and fewer still since Fives attacked the Chancellor and fled into the underbelly of the city to trap Rex and their General and spout his delusions, and since Fox… put an end to it. If Rex could be surprised by all of that, then who was to say the next person to surprise him would be himself?</p><p>No.</p><p>No. Giving into the darkness, to the despair, is the first step towards defeat. Rex has to hold himself to a higher standard, even if it’s a vain hope.</p><p>Tomorrow.</p>
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